Stone Emperor
by Siachi
Summary: Dungeons & Dragons: A boy priest escapes from his captors with a possessed gem and a dangerous ambition. Saved by a suspicious monk, he sets out to claim his fortune. But there is more then one kind of treasure...
1. The Runner

Stone Emperor

I.

Coin had almost reached the old Imperial highway when the drumming of hooves and yells of encouragement told him he'd been spotted. Giving up any pretence of concealment, he bent double and put on a burst of speed. Arrows hissed past him, showing a fine disregard towards leaving him in any state to answer questions. That meant they'd found his horse then. He'd sent it thundering off south towards the Great Swamp that morning with packed saddlebags. Or maybe they already knew what he was carrying. Either way it didn't matter now. He ducked amongst the rocky columns and redoubled his efforts to scramble up the steep hillside.

The Crown's Barrens were as crumpled as a carelessly thrown blanket spread across a floor. Here the eastern foothills of the Zarhast Mountains met the flatlands rolling north of the Great Swamp. It was rocky, barren moorland, sparsely inhabited by the barbarians who'd overrun the old imperial province. Even the imperial highways wove around the contours of the land rather then slicing straight through. There was just too much rock. He'd thought about that quite carefully last night.

Coin scrambled up over boulders and down along a dry run-off for water. The arrows had stopped now. His pursuers knew they'd be wasting their shafts. He cleared the last of the rocks and half-stumbled, half-sprawled on blessed flat stone. His breath came in sharp, shallow pants. The air along the road seemed still and heavy, like a hot summer afternoon before a storm. A small pair of sandaled feet, wispy hair between the toes, stepped into his vision.

He scrambled to his feet, sending the halfling leaping back with a clatter of pots from her pack. She brought a wooden walking-staff up warily between them. Coin's heart sank. Why, by Fir, in the middle of this entire wilderness, did there have to be a damn halfling tinker in dusty robes standing right in front of him? He couldn't deal with any distractions now. He yelled the first thing that sprang into his mind to get her scrambling.

"Bandits!"

There. Any local in this country would take to their heels at that cry. Coin wasted no more thought on it, but span around and looked down over the valley he had just run through. He knew he was silhouetted against the sky but didn't care. The search party already knew he was here, and the old wards still ran through this stretch of the road. The great engincerer Tains had built these paved stone roads along imperial trade routes, and to mark the boundaries between one province and another. The half-elf had built to last.

He saw his hunters had reached the base of the hill that the road ran along. The sheerness of the slope and its rockiness defeated their horses. It would be all too easy for them to break a leg and throw their riders. The hunters would need to clamber up here on foot.

There were five men in the party that followed him. Four were typical Kauld family clansmen, broad rather then tall, with thick stocky legs and powerful shoulders. Their hair, red or brown, was cropped back close to the skull, and through their ears were the little wooden pins symbolising the enemies they had killed. They were dressed in jerkins and trousers of padded leather. Swords and long knives glinted in their hands. Only their leader bothered to carry a target, the small steel shield used to ward off sword blows.

The fifth man stood taller and leaner then the clansmen with him, and his hair was gleaming black, not rusty brown. Coin saw him and knew at a glance how he'd been tracked so quickly. The man was a Beshtel tribesman, a native of the Zarhast range. Their rangers were said to be able to track the passage of a horse over dry rock. The tribesman also carried the bow that had shot the arrows at Coin minutes earlier, a fresh arrow notched and ready.

Clearly the ranger was still angry at missing the running man. At the sight of Coin standing outlined against the sky, he gave a shout of excitement and swift as a striking snake drew back the bow string and let fly. It was a good shot and flew straight at Coin. In spite of himself he flinched away from it, but the shaft never reached him. Instead the arrow struck something a good three feet away from his face, in thin air, and clattered away as if it had just bounced off a boulder. Coin blinked his eyes. Had the air gone opaque in front of him for split second?

The ranger yelped and leapt back, dropping the bow. Coin had forgotten how superstitious the mountain tribesmen were. The Kauld clansmen had been more exposed to the effects of magic, and in any case knew their own lands and history. They came on, leaping from rock to rock with the ease of people born in the Barrens. Their leader barked something at the tracker in Beshtel as the clansmen started up the slope without him.

The tracker jumped onto his bare-backed horse, too cowed to even pick up his bow. Coin understood the leader's reasoning. No Beshtel warrior would fight a magician unless one of his own spiritmen was there to protect him, but they were excellent riders. The other search parties would quickly learn he'd been cornered. He wouldn't have been so confident if he'd known what was strapped to the pack Coin had been dragging behind him. Coin untied the bow and quickly strung it. From the wicker basket of arrows he selected one of the ones with a black mark running down the shaft.

Calmly, the way he'd been taught, he lined the arrow up with the first clansman coming up the slope, and drew back the string. The man was having trouble with the light, loose stones in that part of the hill, and wasn't looking up. Perhaps he didn't know that while Tains's spells wouldn't let missiles in, the old half-elf hadn't stopped them going out.

"Why are Kauld men leaving their lands and setting foot in ours!" rang out a loud voice "You need a sidon's permission to enter here, or do you forget your own holdings end at the Bright Stones?" 

Underneath the stiff words the speaker was astonished. And very angry.

Coin darted a sideways look. The halfling tinker was standing in the road staring fearlessly down at the climbing humans. Her bag of pans and the walking stick had vanished, and despite her stern expression, she was completely unarmed. The Kauld leader was a quick, practical man, who wasted no time.

"Get the thief! And the kill the halfling, we don't want any witnesses we were here," he called out.

Coin had already loosed his first arrow. He had known what the man's response would be. The tinker had doomed herself with her own stupidity. Still, with any luck she would buy him some time. His shot was an awkward one, hitting his target in the soft flesh of the neck beneath the ear. Blast it. He'd been aiming for the throat. The man's head snapped back, and he fell, bouncing down the hillside. Perhaps he could have stopped himself before he died, but the poison had already set his body convulsing. He did not get up.

Coin's shot brought a yell of horror from the other clansmen. They scrambled faster up the loose scree at the top of the hill. Coin found the leader and loosed a second arrow, but incredibly, the bearded man's target deflected the shot into the long grass at the edge of the road. The two ordinary clansmen had veered away along the slope from the threat of Coin's bow, and clambered onto the road away to his right. He had run out of time. They found the halfling in front of them, still standing and waiting. Well, she'd hold them up for a few seconds, he thought.

He dropped the useless bow and drew his sword as the hairy Kauld leader crested the hill right in front of him.

II.

Hunnah let her body relax and drain away the mind's fear with it, the way her old sidon master had taught her so long ago. She waited in the seeming limpness that the enemies of the Order so often mistook for frozen fear. It made them sloppy with their aim and careless with their footwork, while the monk gained a terrifying mechanical focus about which exact order of blows would kill the attacker in front of them.

The two humans scrambling up the hill where typical Barrens warriors, with the heavy shoulders of brawlers and the heavier bellies of hefty drinkers. Their arms were as thick as her legs, and they each carried a short sword and a long stabbing dirk. They went straight after the stranger who had shot the other clansman, virtually ignoring her. On seeing her still barring their way, one snorted softly and skirted around, heading towards the obvious danger. The other paused and swung with his sword, thinking to dispatch an annoying intruder who'd blundered into something she had no business with.

He wasn't used to fighting a halfling, and the sword sailed over her head as she crouched, spun under his guard, and rose upwards in a blur. One hand shot out, palm first, and slammed into the man's nose. There was a hideous crunching sound as she drove a splinter of bone into the man's brain. His head snapped back, and he took one staggering step forwards before pitching to the ground, his sword clattering on the road behind him.

Hunnah ran for the second warrior, who had half-turned back towards her. Humans were so slow sometimes. He was still bringing his sword to bear as she caught him. She hit him with a volley of punches and chops. One fist slammed into his groin and he doubled up with a squeal- the Order taught its monks to punch through oaken planks, leather padding was nothing- the second struck the heart, and the squeal turned high-pitched as the air left his lungs. The first fist arced back again, upwards, and the throat was crushed. The noise stopped and the warrior toppled over. His lips moved as he tried sucking in air, his eyes rolled wildly about as he tried to follow the movement of her feet. She'd seen it before. She didn't wait, but stamped down hard, breaking his neck so she wouldn't have to look as he suffocated in the fresh air. Quickest was kindest in these things she remembered her instructor saying. You did what you had to do to win the fight, and then you finished it.

Something bounced down the road behind her. She turned and saw the upturned head of the clansman who'd called out to kill her; his beard braids trailing behind his head. The face looked almost astonished, as though it couldn't quite work out how it came to be there. Behind it, the man's body toppled to the ground with majestic slowness. The crash of the metal target on the paved road jarred Hunnah's ears. It's clattering was suddenly the only sound on the Road. 

The stranger who had cut off the clansman's head knelt down, and unconcernedly cleaned his sword on the dead man's tunic. His hands were steady, his face peculiarly expressionless. Hunnah expected to see a veteran's detachment or gloating satisfaction at a kill, or even just plain relief at coming through alive and unhurt. Instead there was just an absence of feeling, almost as though the man's mind had separated from the body, like a brain-fever patient she'd seen once.

No. Not man, but boy, she realised with a start.

Hunnah knew humans well enough to judge their ages. They aged faster then halflings, that was all. There were no lines tightening the skin of the face, and a kind of clumsiness in the lanky body that told of someone whose height and reach were still stretching out. He was medium height, and slim, for a human. A downy caterpillar moustache crawled across his upper lip, dark blond like his hair. To a human he would have looked very young. With it, his casual air was intolerably.

"Put that thing away. Its as clean as it'll get." she barked. More roughly then she'd intended, but her nerves where still stretched from the skirmish.

His eyes flashed upwards, startled and angry, and caught her own as she stood over him. A menacing moment came where both trembled on the edge… and then it passed, as the boy looked away, sliding his sword back into its scabbard. But Hunnah watched him far more closely for it.

"Who are you?" he asked warily "You're not the tinker you dress as, that's for sure. I suppose I should be thankful for that."

"Yes," she said shortly "You should be."


	2. A Difference of Opinion

III.

Any gratitude the boy felt certainly didn't show in his face. He gave her a black look, and stood up, brushing his clothes nonchalantly. 

"What do you want?" he snapped impatiently "If you're after money, forget it. I'm not a rich man, and most of what I did have those ghouls' friends have taken. Search their carcasses if you like."

There was something disturbing about him as he spoke, a stamped selfishness that stood out starkly on the young face that repulsed her. But intimidation was something she wasn't going to put up with, not on her own road, and she hid the unease with a sharp snap of her own."I'm not interested in money! And you don't give permission for me to do anything here, boy. The land here doesn't belong to you, you are not part of it and you certainly aren't welcome in it!" She stepped up to him and jabbed a finger at his face. "You're the trespasser here, and the only thing that stops you being handed right back over to those clansmen's kin is my permission, as sidon for this place, for you to stay in the Order's lands. The only thing!"

His hand fell to his weapon in surprise.

"And what if I just killed you now?" he asked, seeming genuinely curious.

"I'd like to see you do that," she sneered "And what if you did? You can't go back across the border can you? Try it. They'd find you inside a day and hang you from the nearest tree."

"Who would? Who are you?" he asked, suddenly plaintive "What is this place?"

"You are in the wardlands of the Order of the Mountain Path. The villages all around here owe fealty to Zhanna Monastery. I am Sidon Hunnah Zhanna. You may call me Sidon," she spoke bluntly "Welcome to our lands stranger."

She added the ritual greeting perfunctorily.

"Zhanna? You mean those mad mountain monks rule here?"

The stranger's face wrinkled, clearly disgusted at the turn of events. Hunnah was torn between amusement and irritation at his expression. Had she been so arrogant when she was his age? Probably. At least she'd goaded him out of his disturbing blankness.

"I am one of those 'mad monks'," she pointed out, allowing a touch of frost to creep into her voice. Time for this boy to lose some of his swagger and answer some of _her_ questions. "But what are you? An outlander? You've the coastal look about you. From one of the Sea League cities I'd think."

The stranger looked startled. She didn't tell him they received Sea League traders every year up at the Monastery for the fruit crop. Let him think she'd travelled a bit. It wouldn't hurt to raise herself in his opinion.

"My name is Coin," he said finally "I have no line-name, I never knew my parents. Probably they didn't have one either." There was an undertone of old bitterness in his voice. "I am from the coast- from Mitras originally," he paused and gave her a significant look "I'm not welcome amongst them anymore."

An outlaw then, she thought. Well, the lands west of Mitras were still wild enough to hide a fugitive or two. Most of them didn't travel this far though.

"A habit you seem to have brought with you," she said dryly, and he smiled slightly at the grim humour. He was a rogue all right, but at least he didn't beat his chest and declare his innocence at every opportunity. "Why were the clansmen chasing you?" she asked suddenly.

He met her eyes before he replied, honesty seeping from every pore of his face.

"I stole some food from a village," he confessed "I was starving. Those peasants wouldn't accept money for food, and I had nothing to barter with. Ignorant savages! Those men chased me for hours. I probably broke one of their bloody guest-customs."

Placidly she agreed with him that it was a terrible state of affairs to be caught in. Kauldsmen would never chase a man into the wardlands over a stolen hunk of cheese and a fresh loaf, but he wasn't to know that. Food was important in the Barrens. It probably sounded like a plausible tale to him. She'd get him back to Two Pines and Pankelta could find out whatever the real reason these men were dead was. Runners never told a straight story the first time anyway.

"You can rest at the Monastery's waystation in Two Pines tonight. We don't let strangers cross our lands unsupported," she gave him a thin smile "We do kill thieves though."

A strange look of pride crossed the boy's face, suddenly making him look even younger. He clutched his pack and scabbard more closely as he drew himself up.

"I am not a thief," he said firmly "Well," for a moment he looked uncomfortable "Not just a thief anyway. I'm a priest of Fir."

IV.

Coin enjoyed the astonished look the halfling gave him as he spoke. Priests of all faiths were feared, and, usually respected. Figures of authority weren't usually gawky sixteen-year old boys. At a city temple, Coin would have been a humble novice, barely two years into his training. Only at eighteen could he have petitioned to join the powerful ranks of the clergy. But the Church of Fir didn't work like that. The god of night, shadows, theft and deception made enemies easily, and inevitably the authorities persecuted his worshippers. It was the price you paid for the Faith.

Daeron had plucked Coin from the pack of street-children he'd been running with since he could walk. At eleven he was already a survivor. Disease, starvation and violence had carried off half the children his own age. The pimps amongst the Shoreditch alleys had been after him for months. In any case, another three winters at best and he'd have been a knife-carrying tough in one of the street-gangs, with no money and no future.

But he'd been lucky.

Daeron had given Coin himself. He'd given him his name first, and then taught him how to read and write it. From there the lessons ran smoothly onto his letters and the tricks of numbers. He taught him how to use a sword, how to shoot a bow, which poisons could kill a man, and which would knock him out. He didn't need to teach him how to kill. Coin had already learned that when a drunken pimp had tried to drag him down an alley. Daeron just raised him above the mindless pack-savagery of Mitran street-life. Then, in eight days of darkness, fasting, hidden whispers and incense, he had brought him to the Faith.

After that, his lessons had really begun. He was taught how to stand in a street, hidden in plain sight. He was shown how to craft a mask of complete anonymity, how to become instantly forgettable, and how to enter and leave a place leaving no clue he had ever been. And he learnt to channel the divine power of Fir. Daeron had chosen his acolyte well.

But Daeron was dead these four months. So. That was that. The Knights Redemptioners had been fanatically devoted to their founder's relics. The fury at their thefts and at the perpetrators knew no bounds. Coin would never be going back to Mitras, at least not alive. He'd fled any lands hosting a branch of the Knights as fast as he could.

"Please! You aren't a priest," said the monk in a derisive voice "You don't have to lie to me you know. I've said I'm taking you to Two Pines, like any other runner. You're the local headwoman's problem now."

A sense of resentment passed through him, at his situation, at the hectoring monk, about everything. Why couldn't she just let him go on his way then? Even the simplest jobs ended up taking three times as long as they needed to with guards. Why did life always have to be so _difficult_ ?

"Why, does it make any difference?" he asked sullenly, grandstanding gone, "Why would you care one way or the other?"

The monk looked at him strangely for a moment, and opened her mouth as if to speak. Then she seemed to shake herself, and said quietly instead "Meddling with priests is bad luck. We sacrifice to placate Fir to keep our homes and flocks safe just as your people do. If you are his priest you are welcome to pass straight through here, and no-one would stop you."

V.

Coin smiled slowly. Finally, something going his way.

"Let me show you something," he suggested, making his voice friendly "And you can decide for yourself."

He started to reach for his belt, keeping his face nice and reasonable. The halfling's hand flashed inside her robe, and came out holding something metallic that glinted in the weak spring sunshine. Coin's hand paused, startled by her sudden movement. She watched him intently, a throwing star pinched between index finger and thumb.

"Slowly," she smiled, with false geniality.

Coin nodded, and plucked out his pick-bag. Inside was a strip of black cloth, neatly rolled. Secure in tiny hoops and pockets, the unrolled strip held a selection of picks, needles and other little tools a person might need to open a locked door. He took a needle at random and, holding his hand out flat so the monk could see, pricked the meat of his thumb.

He made a small sound at the back of the throat as the tip of the needle went in, and cursed himself. Pinching his thumb, he made a bead of blood ooze up and let it trickle off his hand. The needle he returned to its place in the cloth belt, before he straightened up and let the monk see the pink prick of blood on his hand.

"What?" she asked, but he thought she guessed what he was doing. It was after all, magic only a priest could claim.

He didn't reply, but closed his hand into a fist, and passed over it with his other hand. The words of the spell came automatically to his lips, and his felt a tiny flush of warmth creep through his hand and up his arm.

Blinking away the after-glare of spell-light, he uncurled his hand and presented it to the watchful halfling. The blood had vanished, leaving a tiny spot of new pink skin. The throwing star vanished back inside her robe, and he thought a tiny flash of respect passed grudgingly across her face. Power often bought it he'd found. But monks are very good at looking inscrutable, and the small face defeated him.

"That's a priests' trick all right," she said slowly "Well… Coin, that's a great skill in one so young. Pity you didn't think to trade on this for your meals. It might have saved you some running."

"I've learnt not to show my magic unless I have to," he said steadily. Did she suspect? Or was that just a casual comment? "Peasants are suppositious and scared of strangers. And there are always the local Seigne's men wanting to drag you off to clear the boils off the great man's arse."

As he'd hoped she laughed, and he changed the subject before she could continue her questions, hoping the matter was dropped.

"Can you show mw where to buy supplies in the village?" he asked quickly "I lost my horse when I escaped; it took most of my gear with it. I'll need to buy food, water skins, anything. I'm planning on moving on pretty soon."

Hunnah answered him patiently "The waystations are kept well-stocked by the villages they're in. You can search for what you need there; I doubt you'll need to barter with the locals. I'll act as your escort to our eastern border as soon as I've warned Pankelta- she's the local headwoman- I'll be gone for a few days."

"_You'll be following me? All the time?_"

Abruptly, Coin was an outraged adolescent again. Hunnah's lips quirked.

"Yes, don't you remember what you were told? You are free to cross our lands… but not unescorted. I'm a sidon, a travelling monk. It's our job; we watch the border, passing through all the villages that might need us. Sometimes we come across travellers. It's our job then to guide them off the monastery's lands, and make sure nobody comes to harm."

Meaning, make sure the visitors caused no trouble, thought Coin to himself. He was still seething at being corralled like this, but he held onto his temper. Impatience and haste got so many people into unnecessary trouble. He'd keep quiet, walk quickly and with luck be through these valleys in two days. Then we'll see, he thought to himself.

Hunnah stooped and picked up her pack and staff. She seemed to take his acquiescence for granted. Dusting her robes off, she gestured at him to follow, and set off along the old road. The bodies she left where they had fallen, for the wild animals to pick over. Coin rolled his eyes at the crudity of Barrens customs. He bent down and pulled his dagger out of its foot sheath. Kneeling down, he began to cut off one of the wooden battle pins from his victim's ear. It would make a good trophy to remind him of today's fighting- he'd follow on after the monk when he was good and ready.


	3. A Village at the Edge

VI.

Two Pines was a typical Barrens hamlet. The village huts were circular, the walls made of stone and the roofs thatched. Smoke from the evening cooking fires blew through the smoke-holes at the tip of each roof. The sound of hammer on steel drifted up from the village smithy, a sign of prosperity in such a little place. Down in the valley the workers were just leaving their painfully cleared plots of land. The crops- barley, cabbages, turnips; whatever grew well in the damp climate- were kept well separate from the common land in the hills above. There, sheep and goats owned by the luckier or the wealthier villagers were allowed to graze freely.

There were plenty more animals this year, thought Hunnah contentedly. She took unreasonable pleasure at the way the little settlement, so close to the border, was thriving. It hadn't always been that way she thought. Just for a moment, fire and smoke flashed behind her eyes. She ignored it, as she had learnt to. That was in the past, and it had happened to a different person. Meanwhile she was home, or at least in that part of the world she thought of as home whenever she travelled outside the monastery.

'Home' was underneath the carefully tended watchtower; a raised platform on solid stilts with a rare iron bell hung from it. It was a stout little cabin, one of the few wooden buildings in Two Pines. Tonight there would be a soft bed for her, and warm food. But first she needed to see Panketla, the village headwoman, and she had an idea where she would be.

"You can sleep at my cabin tonight," she told Coin as he followed her down the trail to the hamlet. "The waystation has beds for two. Better food too."

"Isn't there an inn or some place with a barn? I hate be a burden to you after all you've already done for me."

The boy's voice was honeyed as he spoke. Hunnah felt a twitch of amusement at his painfully obvious attempts to assert his independence.

"Heh-heh! An inn in Two Pines? I must tell Panketla that one when we find her!" she laughed "Look around you Coin; even the animals sleep with their owners at night. If you fancy a night on straw and a ladle of turnip soup for your dinner you can ask about. But unless you've a mind to bend that back of yours in the fields tomorrow, you'll not have much luck."

"I can pay," he protested "I have money you know."

"Ah-ha, I thought that horse of yours didn't ride away with everything. But you won't find it much use up here. Two Pines is the largest settlement for thirty miles. The rest are all small farms, one or two families. Up here the people trade only with the monastery and amongst each other. Money is no use up here, there's nothing to buy with it. Barter goods or work, that's the only way."

Frustration, disgust and amazement blended across Coin's face. "I can't stay here," "I don't know anything about farming! I buy my food, I don't grow it!"

A thought struck him. "How will I get my supplies," he demanded "If the villagers won't sell me them? You promised me I could find fresh supplies if I followed you here!"

"No," she corrected him, her good humour beginning to evaporate as they walked past the first stone hut "I brought you here because the law tells me to. The waystation is well stocked for just such occasions. If there's something you need from the village, you can pay me and I'll barter stores with Panketla for it. The monastery can find a use for your stolen money."

"You seem to know an awful lot about my money considering how little we've been travelling together. I suppose you've '_seen my sort before_'."

She stared up at him as they turned the corner of the hut. He wore an ugly sneer as he stared back down at her. Anger pulsed through her at the affected world-weary cynicism. What did he know about anything?

"You're _michos_, a bad traveller. There are always people accused of crimes fleeing across our border from the Kauld. Most of them are clansmen, but there are a few like you, outsiders. We won't hand you back to the clansmen, but we don't want you here either. You brought trouble on the border today, you'll eat valuable food tonight, and you'll have to be watched all the time because we can't trust outlaws like you," she ticked her points off on her fingers as she spoke, "We owe you shelter and a guide while you stay inside the law, but you can't stay here. We can't afford burdens like you."

She turned to look at him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke, but he simply stared coldly back. Hard words had stopped moving this boy a long time ago.

"At least there'll be food then," he said blandly "Oh, you can take me with you when you visit the headwoman. I'll take you up on your suggestion; I'll trade healing for my own supplies. No need to deplete your precious stocks."

He wanted the excuse to be present when she spoke to Pankelta, Hunnah realised, perhaps to see what the headwoman had to say when she saw the stranger and heard Hunnah's news about the skirmish on the Road. Or perhaps he thought he could bribe her. Well, she was more worried about what the headwoman would have to say about today's deaths. Let the boy find out he was stuck for himself, it was the only way they seemed to learn at that age.

VII.

Pankelta was standing outside the smithy with the rest of the fieldworkers, passing out cups. A cask of cider, traded for tools with the Order, had been rolled out and broken open for the thirsty farmhands. Two Pines had no inn, but you could always find a friendly face or two clustering around the warmth of the forge in the evening. Sedge the blacksmith pretended to grumble about it, but he never seemed to mind the small children who hung about throughout the day, pestering him with questions.

Pankelta was a human, like most of the villagers, an old woman at forty-three with a stooped back from years of fieldwork. Her face crinkled up in a smile though as she saw Hunnah pushing her way through the crowd. If she was tired from her day she hid it well.

"Hunnah! Why you're early! We weren't expecting you until tomorrow. Here, have a drink- no really, I haven't touched it."

Hunnah accepted the cup held out to her with a nod of thanks. She took a sip and smiled acknowledgement at the others greetings, ignoring the curious glances at Coin. Pankelta found a fresh mug and filled it from the cider barrel. The two stepped closer to the clanging of Sedge's anvil, and Pankelta sat down with a grateful sigh, leaning her back against the smithy wall with closed eyes. Hunnah rested against the wall standing, and spoke softly into the headwoman's ear.

"There was trouble up near the Bright Rocks. A runner made it up to the Road, that outsider boy who's here with me."

"Another one, eh? That's the third you've brought in this season. That bitch on the other side of the Rocks is tearing about like a cat through a flock of pigeons. You'd think she'd feel secure by now. It's not like her father left many friends."

"A clan chief's got to have an heir before they can take their Seat," said Hunnah "Zia has no children, her father saw to that. She had to blood-bond her half-brother Fain into her line. She can control him easily enough; he's only a baby. But she's got no heir of age to succeed her, and as a usurper herself, that makes her vulnerable. An ambitious Seigne could topple her if they had time to gather support. This way they each scatter back to their holds to avoid her, and their warriors are far away chasing fugitives up and down the country."

"Humph, perhaps. I think she's just mad like her father. It runs through that family just like crooked backs do through mine."

"There'd be nothing wrong with your back if you would just rest it and stay out of the fields," said Hunnah, glad to leave an uncomfortably topic to revisit this old argument. "You'll need another trip to Mito to crack it back into shape soon. Have you been using that ointment I brought you?"

"Yes, foul stuff that it is. It does help the ache in the mornings. But I can't stay out of my fields Hunnah, they need tending. Besides, what kind of headwoman doesn't work? Only a dead one, that's who. I suppose as old and decrepit as you think I'm getting you'll stop bothering me with all your politics soon as well."

Pankelta had three children, two nephews and three nieces who had all worked on Pankelta's plots since childhood. Pankelta insisted she supervise their efforts from dawn to dusk every day to 'make sure they're doing it right. They miss things you know'.

Hunnah opened her mouth, saw Pankelta's bright eyes watching her, and gave up.

"Do you want to see him now?" she asked weakly instead.

"Yes," said Pankelta "Well boy, you can stop hiding back there now. We need to talk. Get out where we can see you."

Pankelta's eyes weren't as sharp as they had been either, another thing she refused to acknowledge. Realising the old woman's problem, Coin stepped closer sharply. Hunnah paused for a second, but he remained silent. Annoyed, she spoke to cover his rudeness.

"He says he's from Mitras. I found him facing five men, Kauldsmen and a scout, where Tains's Road passes the dyke, just before the Bright Rocks. Pankelta, they'd chased him across the borderlands and onto the Road. When I challenged them, they attacked me too."

Pankelta lost her bantering look at Hunnah's news. This was more serious news for her hamlet then an escaped fugitive claiming sanctuary.

She asked in a strained voice "They'd passed the Rocks? Sweet Shan! Wait. How many of them did you kill?"

"Four," Coin spoke up suddenly "The Beshtel got away."

"So they know you've escaped and will probably have made for here," Pankelta said accusingly, watching Hunnah. She shrugged helplessly back.

"Probably. Yes. I'm afraid so," she said helplessly "There really was nowhere else to go, Pankelta."

"Even so, even so," the headwoman muttered "The price of that waystation of yours is costing us more then we had bargained for here, Hunnah." She focused on Coin suddenly "Boy! What have you done to make Zia Kauld's men come raiding into our lands? Why were they chasing you? Answer me now. Or I'll run you out of this village without your boots and you can try walking the next eighty miles in your bare feet."

"Pankelta-," Hunnah began to protest. It wasn't that she liked the boy, but she'd brought him here. The headwoman only waved her off impatiently, and Hunnah throttled back her sudden anger at her friend. Pankelta made Two Pines' choices, not Hunnah, but dammit, there would be words later.

"Talk," she said. Coin hesitated then saw the closed look on their faces. Perhaps his nerve faltered, or perhaps he was tired of being berated and wanted to win a friend. Either way he lost the insolent look he'd worn ever since Hunnah had met him. He stooped and reached into his pack. Hand closed around it tightly, he brought an object up for their inspection.

"I took this," he said simply.


	4. A Black Opal

VIII.

It was a polished black opal, as big as his fist, beautiful by the fading daylight; it reflected them back as faceless shadows. They stared down at it as it lay in his hand. Pankelta made a small noise at the back of her throat. The stone was probably worth more then the entire hamlet. Coin closed his hands around the gem protectively, and met their speechless stares.

"I'm a fugitive from my own home," he said, strained "I fled into the wilderness to escape my pursuers. I wandered alone and lost for days. A clan war party came across me eventually. They were going to kill me out of spite and because I was a weakling outlander. I touched the first to taunt me and Fir's power burned his arm off. Then I healed it. They let me live and took me straight to Zia. She… She…" he choked abruptly, and couldn't continue.

"She what boy?" prompted Pankelta, a bit more gently. Hunnah felt a pang as she realised she had never told the headwoman Coin's name. Then she remembered the blank look on the boy's face as he cleaned his blade on the body of the man he'd just killed, and wondered if her sympathy was misplaced.

"She had me heal people," Coin said raggedly "Prisoners. Her other victims. So she could torture them again. And again. Only, after the first time they knew what would happen to them and she could play with them a little."

He seemed to stare past them, back at the horror. "She drove them mad. Bit by bit."

He met their eyes then, and they stared back at him, making him flinch violently. Neither was surprised by the atrocities he was describing, but they were shocked by what he'd seen and done. It was appalling, Hunnah thought. Even the old wizard had let his victims go the first time. Only a true monster would keep repairing the torn flesh for another turn. Did she realise how she flirted with her own annihilation? The priest was only a channel for their God's power to flow into the world, and that power was jealously guarded. Perhaps the Kauld ruler enjoyed the sense of danger usurping it gave her.

Coin broke her thoughts "I knew I had to leave. I took the gem as an offering. Its theft was a mighty gift for Fir. He understands His people do what they must. We would never survive otherwise,"

He faltered, uncertain. Even he is not quite convinced, thought Hunnah.

"He does, does he?" Pankelta asked softly.

Coin looked at her expression, and a muscle under his eye jumped, but he nodded stubbornly.

"To kill an unbeliever is not murder," he quoted "If it saves the lives of the faithful."

Hunnah sensed what was coming before Coin finished speaking. He couldn't know that twelve years ago Two Pines had paid fealty to Jothanial Kauld not Zhanna Monastery. The self-styled Grand Wizard had brought settlement after settlement under his grip, picking them off one at a time. Those that refused starved after their crops and homes were burned around them and their few animals stolen or butchered by Kauld raiders.

Then Kauld had overreached himself. He laid siege to Zhanna Monastery, and brought the wrath of the Order of the Mountain Path down on his hillmen. It was a past they both shared, but it had marked Pankelta more deeply. First she'd lost two sisters and their families to Kauld raiders, and then her husband had died outside the walls of the Monastery. She had never really forgiven.

Pankelta speared Coin with a look of withering contempt. Then she leaned forward deliberately and spat between his boots. Coin's face went white with anger, but he couldn't touch the old headwoman and they both knew it.

"You should have been ridden down at the Road," she said thickly "How a thing like you is allowed to carry on while good, honest people are cut down… It mocks the Gods," she muttered "Or they mock me. Get away from me. You can stay in the monk's quarters. If you are still here an hour after dawn tomorrow, I'll hang you from the watchtower to appease the Kauld witch. Would you like that?"

"No."

Coin's lips barely moved to form the word. Pankelta snorted and got up to walk back to the crowd of villagers around the cider barrel. She left her own drink untouched on the ground. As she turned her back though, Coin's hand rose to point at her and he snarled out a string of arcane words.

"No!" Hunnah's shout echoed Coin's last denial as she flung herself between Coin and her friend.

She flew through the air, her body braced for his spell blast. There was no pain. She thudded into the ground, rolled into a crouch and stared wildly around her. Coin was ignoring her, watching Pankelta. Her friend looked slowly around, twisting a back no longer crooked, to look behind her. She blinked back involuntary tears, and brought her hand up to wipe them away. Instead she stared, as if fascinated at the little lines and whorls in the skin of her fingers. Finally she looked up at Coin, bewildered.

"So you can see what you're spitting at," he said.

IX.

She opened her eyes three hours before dawn. She'd allowed herself five hours sleep first. It had been a long walk today, and she had to keep herself fresh, because this was a delicate job. Besides, she needed Coin to have fallen asleep. They had been travelling for two nights and the need to see the stone again had tugged at her all the way, making her as morose and withdrawn as her companion. Something about it worried at her mind like a mental splinter.

The fast pace he'd kept up, despite her smaller legs, worked against him now; he was snoring deeply.

The monastery taught an initiate a lot about how the body and the mind could work together. 'The first step on the path to understanding creation is to understand yourself,' as the mantra went. Routine and habit unconsciously set an untrained person's sleeping patterns, including the time they came out of sleep. The monks trained themselves to sleep with no pattern. They learnt how to listen to their bodies' natural sense of time, and how to set their waking hour to a time of their own choosing.

He was sleeping with his head on his pack again. During their stay at the village, he'd never set it down once. Was it a spell of obsession on the gem? She rejected that thought almost immediately; who would be stupid enough to carve a spell like that on a stone like the gem?

She crept slowly towards him. It was difficult to see at first, but the sky was clear and the moon was waxing. She waited until her eyes had adjusted, then reached gently down and eased his head off the pack. She was not a trained rogue, but halflings are naturally dexterous, and monks are _made_ strong and subtle. 

Slowly, slowly, she moved the pack away. Finally, it was out from underneath his head. She lowered his head to the grass and slid backwards on the tips of her fingers and toes. Coin slept on, unaware. She let out the breath she'd been holding in, and fought the urge to suck in air. Instead, she breathed in quick, shallow sips until her heartbeat slowed.

Clutching the pack to her chest, she walked a dozen metres from the safety of the camp, ignoring the chill away from her warm blankets. Best get this over quickly and get back to sleep. Coin would probably notice his pack had been rifled through in the morning, but by then it would be done. There would be nothing he could do about it. He was probably just afraid they treated thieves as harshly as the coastal cities out here. She didn't care what he'd taken from her neighbours though. Likely they had stolen it first. All she needed was to know Coin's little trove would cause the Order no problems.

The pack opened easily under her hands. She flipped it open and peered down inside it. In the dark it was hard to make anything out. The inside of the bag held a collection of hard and soft shadows. She slid her hand in a stirred it around, not quite sure what she was going to do. Perhaps she could risk a little light?

Her fingers brushed something smooth and crystal-hard. Slowly, she reached down and fastened her fingers around it. Pulled it into the moonlight. It was the polished black opal, as big as her fist, beautiful by the moonlight as it reflected back the shapes of the stars.

The voice spoke inside her head, papery dry and thin, familiar. Impossible.

"Welcome Sidon Hunnah. It's been a long time for both of us since Shandon Hall, hasn't it?"

Hunnah jerked upright, the shock of the invasion sent adrenaline coursing through her body. Her stomach rolled, and the skin of her hands crawled where it held the gem. Inside her head a voice road with laughter.

"Perfect! Perfect!"

She cast it from her with a shriek.

Coin jolted up, disturbed by the cry. Distracted, it took him a split second to realise his pack was gone. Then he tossed aside his blanket and stalked towards Hunnah with an angry yell.

The monk's self-possession had slipped completely away from her as her mind revolted at what she had touched thoughts with. She turned towards the priest with a look of loathing as he neared her. Too slow, he realised and brought his hands up in a clumsy block, but she had already leapt up into the air. The kick scythed over his guard, and he felt a hammer-blow strike his head. The grass came rushing up to meet him. The last thing he felt was its cool brush against his face. Then his thoughts spiralled away, down into nothing.

Hunnah found she was crouched over the sprawled priest. Her foot throbbed, and she rubbed it absently. She was coming back to herself, but her mind felt muzzy, slow. She shouldn't have kicked the priest so hard. It had been a killing blow, pulled at the last moment by the ragged edges of her control. Stiffly, she reached over to him to check his breathing.

"What have you done?" she asked out loud, to break the silence of the night. But if she spoke to herself, the unconscious priest or the dead man in the gem, she couldn't say.


	5. Think in the Now

X.

Coin stirred against the grass. The left side of his face felt swollen and tender. He rolled over onto his back, found himself watching the halfling, and wished he hadn't. She was sitting cross-legged with the opal on her lap, watching him intently. She said nothing, seemingly content to let him start the talking.

A profound lack of interest in her unspoken demand for explanations washed through him. Another place, another angry guard wanting to grill him. The world was full of them. He stared up at the lightening sky, and then shut his eyes. Dawn was coming. He'd been out for hours. 

"Stone, this wasn't what we agreed."

Despite his best effort, his voice came out tinged with hurt. A little boy's outraged sense of betrayal at someone tattling on him. He snorted contemptuously at himself. In his mind he could almost hear Daeron lecturing him.

_"When you're out, when you're on a job, you have to think right. Forget anger, forget friendship, and forget fear. Emotions just get in the way. Think in the Now, remember the angles. Concentrate on the present."_

He missed his teacher suddenly, with an almost physical ache in his chest. Then he blocked it out. Think in the Now.

The halfling stirred; coming back from whatever plane of thought she'd gone to while watching over him.

"He won't answer you unless he feels like it, you know," she said "Do you even know who this was?"

Coin debated with himself. Truth or lies? They could have been talking while he was out. The stone could have told her anything. Clearly it had revealed itself when the monk searched his pack. He couldn't trust it. So. Truth then. But as little as possible.

"His name is Jothanial Kauld. He is the chief of the Kauld clan," he said simply, then lapsed back into silence. Let the halfling come up with the questions. Coin would wait her out, lead her off into irrelevancies, keep at it until she got too tired to ask him more. He'd keep as many of his precious scraps of information to himself as he could.

It earned him another of the monk's inscrutable stares.

"I don't think so Coin," she said at last "Jothanial was killed by his daughter last winter, so she could seize leadership of the clan. She was always ambitious, and Jothanial has- _had_- a nasty habit of disposing of his children when they started to chafe under him."

Coin gave her a puzzled look, and she gestured vaguely with her hand.

"He's a wizard. Those spells of theirs will let them live almost forever. He's had many children over the years. It leaves the line of succession clear and that keeps the clan elders happy. He locks them with up their mothers, keeps them isolated from everyone and everything until their teens. The Kauld world is all they ever know."

The stone interrupted them for the first time. Clearly Kauld had been listening in. But then, what else did he have to do?

"I'm afraid I had to change our arrangement boy. Halflings always were a bit too nosey for their own good. I'm very angry with you my dear, and my reckless daughter of course. Such a simple girl, and very rash, very rash of course. Now I fear she is somewhat confused by… what is needed from a leader."

The voice in their minds spoke indulgently. It had an unpleasantly distorted quality to it, like an echo ringing down a well. Remembered sounds. With no body, Jothanial Kauld could only project his thoughts in mimicry of the voice he'd once had.

Something close to hate flared behind the closed door of the monk's face.

"No, she's vicious. And feral. The way you make all your children," she said softly.

Coin shifted uncomfortably. Clearly the monk and the stone had an unhappy history, and he was caught in the middle. He remembered the hatred he'd seen in the eyes of the headwoman when she'd discovered his service with the clan. A prickly dread crept through him as he wondered what his flight with Jothanial Kauld made him in the halfling's eyes. Did she hate him secretly, like the villagers had? He remembered the dead clansmen on the road, and wished he had his knife.

"She poisoned him," he heard himself saying "But he'd done something to himself. When he was dying, he put himself away. Into the stone somehow. She couldn't reach him there. It was on a pillar and covered in spell traps and wards. She thought he was like a ghost somehow, that a priest could cast him out into the Funeral Plane. But he wasn't. It was a spell."

He remembered how the stone had looked to him, in the greenish glow the world took on when you looked through spellsight. He'd been trying to detect magical wards or traps on the gem itself. Instead his eyes had seen an eerie swirling fog, drifting like a trapped cloud inside the gem. Then, distortion, stretching, a leering fog-face sliding along the inside of the gem-

He flinched back to the present. Hunnah was looking at him, waiting for him to go on, but he'd suddenly run out of things to say. He flapped his arm vaguely, mirroring her earlier gesture. She looked far too understanding.

"So you found each other," she continued for him "And he persuaded you to double-cross his daughter and smuggle him out. He let you through the wards. And he guided you here. To us."

"He said you didn't allow any banditry and were the safest way out," Coin said curtly.

The monk gave him a small smile at the stiff compliment. "So what did he buy you with?" she asked.

Seeing Coin's startled look of dismay, she nodded in confirmation, the pretence at warmth gone.

"You, the best person to work out how to drive his spirit out of the gem, are allowed to touch the jewel and live. You trusted him and he trusted you, enough that you each took the risk of betrayal. You turn on Zia and the Kauld, abandon your reward for a risky flight to a land full of complete strangers. For what? A gem you can't sell? Come on priest! _What did he buy you with?_"

Coin sat up and crossed his legs, and let his face settle into the easy confidence Daeron had always used when he was cutting a deal.

_Always make eye contact, it makes people nervous, it distracts them. If you can manage sincerity while you're doing it, they think you can't be lying. They remember your face and forget what you said._

For a wonder, the stone stayed silent.

_Truth or lie? It could have told her anything. Truth then. But as little as possible._

_Think in the Now!_

"He promised to lead me to Kang's Treasure," he began carefully, and was surprised, and not a little hurt, when after staring at him in astonishment, she turned around and bent double, cackling with laughter.


	6. Kang

XI.

_The legend of Kang's Treasure has a long history in the Barrens. Kang is a romantic hero in the highest traditions of theatrical tragedy, the pure-hearted outsider who fought a desperate struggle against a merciless barbarian enemy, and died at the moment of his triumph. Taking with him the secret of a lost Legion's buried treasure. As Your Majesty has expressed such an interest in the truth of the tale, I have searched the Royal Archives most diligently, and complied a short summary of the story and a history of its setting, the Barrens themselves. I trust this will satisfy Your Most Royal Highness's curiosity, and that we may return to the more pressing matter of the Sandstep boundary dispute tomorrow._

_Crown's Barrens was always the farthest flung of the Zenni Empire's provinces, and it was the first to be lost as that empire fractured and faded into history. The Zenni had first come for the iron ore in the northern arm of the Zarhast mountain range, and then stayed for the tin they found in the foothills on the western side. The Barrens also acted as a natural barrier between the iron mines and the twin threats of the plains tribes to the west and the lizardmen tribes of the Great Swamp to the south._

_Crown's Barrens flourished under Zenni rule. Slaves and colonists from the coast came; to work the mines, to build the roads and towns any new province needed, and to farm the uplands sheep that flourished in the chilly climate. Wool, slaves, tin and gold dust flowed out of the province to be eagerly sucked up by the centre of trade for the Western world, the Zenni capital Tantras. From there, trade went eastwards across the sea to the Shifting Isles, and from thence to the lands of the elves._

_The frontier role of the Barrens never changed however, and the province provided the Imperial army with a steady stream of recruits wanting to escape the crofting life of their parents. Seen as a half-barbarian backwater on the wrong side of the mountains from the capital, the province was permanently under-defended by the later Zenni Emperors._

_As the empire slid into civil war and dissolution, the last Emperors had better uses for their soldiers at home then in defending the frontiers of the empire. So when the Beshtel nation, fleeing their own calamity, arrived in the southwestern corner of the province, there was only a single Zenni Legion left to face them. A warning from history that Your Majesty has taken to heart._

_Kang, whose name will be forever associated with the Barrens, was a half-elf from the Shifting Isles, and a priest of Shan, the goddess of nature, nurture and growing things. The cult of Shan is not generally a militant one, and it is unusual for a priest of the Green-Eyed Goddess to serve in the military, even as a healer. Kang however, by all accounts an unusual character, took it upon himself to see as much as possible of his patron power's domains. Lacking the wealth to do this on his own, he signed up to the Legions, and travelled the empire, wherever his postings took him._

_Fatefully for the Crown's Barrens, Kang's legion was the Hiladic 8th, the survivors of whom were sent to garrison the Barrens by the crippled Emperor Bandermir the Hunched, as punishment for opposing him during the civil war that put him in power. When the Legion met its final end at the hands of the Beshtel three years later, Kang had risen to the rank of Cleric-Captain._

_After the disastrous defeat, Kang and his small cavalry squadron apparently managed to extricate themselves from the routed Zenni, and fight a ferocious rearguard action against the tribesmen. Kang is supposed to have summoned a swarm of locusts to drive back the most ardent tribesmen, and personally killed their spiritman. In fact, the tribesmen had most probably stopped to loot the bodies of the dead, a habit that plagues Your Majesty's own men unless they are watched most carefully._

_With Kang vanished the Legion's reserve cohort and the baggage train it had been guarding. Kang reappeared the next spring, leading a flying campaign of raids against the Beshtel with a ragged force of hillmen, ex-legionaries and colonists. But the treasure from the Legion's paychest, its gathered tribute, its store of magical weapons, and the revered Legionary standard itself all vanished. Many claim it is still buried out somewhere in the mountains, supposedly in Kang's 'secret mountain stronghold', the name of which changes with the teller. A more worldly man would suspect that in reality the gold went to feed and pay hungry soldiers, and the magic weapons to bribe mountain chiefs._

_In any case, the raids eventually provoked the Beshtel Ban, Valens, to gather all his tribesmen at the Bright Rocks, where upon he laid siege to nearby Zhanna Monastery, in the hope that Kang would be forced to come to the relief of his allies. The Ban had guessed correctly, and three days before high summer, Kang and his army arrived in the hills above the Bright Rocks. In the ensuing battle, both Ban Valens and Kang were killed, and although the Beshtel fled the field in disarray, there was no figurehead left who could drive them completely from the Barrens._

_Today, the Barrens are populated by descendents of both peoples; Zenni colonists and Beshtels have merged seamlessly into a patchwork of half-civilised clans. Only in the Zarhast range itself can you still find truly barbarian tribesmen. Ironically, the mountain strongholds of Kang have become the land of his enemy, but the cleric did preserve a touch of civilisation in the foothills and vales themselves. For example, the people there speak a dialect of Classical Zenni that an educated man can struggle through. I believe Mitran merchants have long traded for goods from the west through the natives as a result._

Royal Report from Court Historian Gurion to Hardin Great Queen Janis IV

"Ahhhh, you've just reminded how young you really are," Hunnah laughed, "I always get fooled by the size of you humans sooner or later."

"Laugh if you like!" barked Coin "But I know what I'm doing here, and I can prove it! You think that just because I'm young, that I'm stupid enough-"

"Certainly!" she gloated "And it's no more then you deserve! Jothanial has led you around by the nose through your own greed, chasing after a treasure that's been scattered for nearly two hundred years. If it ever existed in the first place!"

Coin spoke through gritted teeth. "The treasure exists. Don't doubt it. The stone and I made a pact."

"You're very sure of yourself Coin," she replied "But I remember how much Jothanial Kauld's pacts were worth when his clansmen were burning down our villages. He's using you for his own ends, ones you can't even see yet. And at the end, when he's finished with you, you'll be die. And you won't even know why."

"Do you think I am so stupid I would simply put my life in the hands the first mad wizard to spin me a story about lost treasure? We made a pact, I told you! I swore a Priest's Oath: to take him out of his clan's holdings, to protect and keep him safe until we reach a new land, and never to let him fall into the hands of his daughter. You know what would happen to me if I broke my word."

"I do," she said quietly. The priest's magic was bound to the oath. If it were ever broken, his own power would strike him down. "I would have warned you against giving it."

"Ah, but then how could I be sure he would have kept his promises to me Sidon?" Jothanial spoke suddenly "It would be so easy to break them, would it not? I am not the man I was, after all."

"I questioned him for a long time," said Coin "I cast a truth spell, and listened to his answers. They were quite clear, he answered them all and with no evasion. Then I cast a divination spell." His voice became certain "Fir answered me. Kang's treasure exists, and Jothanial knows where it is. My oath only binds me if he leads me to the treasure."

"How," she asked sceptically "Can a stone show you where a two-hundred year-old treasure is buried?"

"Because I was there two hundred years ago when it was hidden, halfling. I served in the Legions," Jothanial spoke softly. "With a certain Cleric-Captain Kang."


	7. Follow and Watch

XIII.

The sun was setting in the west by the time they pitched camp, and Hunnah's feet were sore. Keeping up with the human's longer stride was taxing work. It had been a taxing journey, come to that. Eighty miles to the borders of Zhanna Monastery's wardlands, where a second Imperial highway still formed the main trading route over the mountains, then a two-day stop at the settlement of Quains to buy tents, climbing kits, rope, anything Jothanial's dusty memories suggested they might need. Finally they had hiked into the Zarhast range. There had been an uncomfortable encounter with a wild boar, and then a tedious session with the local Beshtel chieftain for permission to cross his territory. Apart from that the journey had been entirely without incident. Hunnah was still wondering how she got here.

The taller peaks were actually still ahead of them. Jothanial had led them to one of the sources of the river Utha, the canyon of the same name. His route baffled Hunnah, but he refused to explain. Eight days of his antics had done nothing to allay her suspicions. If Jothanial knew about the treasure why hadn't he helped himself to it years ago? What he did know? Couldn't he plunder it? Status in Crowns Barren was given to a man with warriors. The wealth and power contained in the hoard would have bought many fighters, yet Kauld hadn't touched it.

A cache of Zenni items… the thought made her run hot, then cold. She didn't care about the treasure, but the artefacts… who knew what there might be? The Emperors had showered their favourite legions with magical gifts, gold and gems. An army's pay chest could strengthen the Order beyond challenge; the thought crept reluctantly through her head. She shook it off. A monk was supposed to intervene in the world only to enforce the Law and to protect the Order. To change the ways of their neighbours had to spring from a genuine request for learning. You couldn't force wisdom on someone. The boy was a case in point.

She couldn't follow Jothanial and inform the Order of his reappearance. She was well away from Two Pines and anyone who could run a message. She'd made her choice back at the campsite. Follow and watch. Perhaps it might be better if the hoard never came to light.

Sedge the blacksmith stopped beating the plough in front of him into shape and frowned. Tendrils of mist wafted underneath the thick wooden doors of the smithy. He glanced around his workshop, looking for what had disturbed his concentration. The smithy stood empty. All was as it should be. He scratched his head, irritated with himself. The weather was bad enough without his mind playing tricks on him.

The fog had come down suddenly this morning, far thicker then the usual morning mist in the valley. He'd had to shut the doors and leave the lamps on, as if it were night. A cold gust of wind brushed his skin as he picked up his hammer again. He glanced up. The damn door had swung open slightly. Mist curled around its edge with creeping green tendrils. He knew he should have looked at that old latch! 

Sedge swore, angry now at having his work disturbed twice. He marched over to it in a fit of temper and slammed it shut. The door didn't shut. Jammed by something, it bounced back at him, and he leapt away as it juddered past him. He looked down to see what was blocking his door, and saw an arm. It lay limply on the floor, splattered with red and grey gore.

His hand fell away from the door, and it eased open. It was little Davis Sesh, the boy who passed him his tools, the back of his head split open by a sword. Sedge looked up from the body. Two bearded faces stared impassively back at him. He turned to run, racing for the hammer he'd set down only ten heart beats ago. The sword plunged cleanly through his back after two paces. He looked down and saw the point of it emerge obscenely from his chest. Giddily, part of him appreciated the quality of the workmanship. Then it was jerked roughly out of him, and he flopped wetly to the floor. He felt his blood pooling slowly under him. It was warm and sticky, but it didn't seem to matter much.

He was too sleepy…..  
….  
…  
.

XIV.

"Don't use the rope," the gem said "You'll need it later."

Coin and Hunnah stood at the edge of the canyon and looked down at the small pebble beach a steep drop away. The tribute river ran narrow and deep here, squeezed between the two walls of rock. Coin glanced at Hunnah. She looked very small and frail to him suddenly.

"Will you be able to climb this?" he asked doubtfully.

She gave him a cool look back.

"I live here, remember?" she said.

Without further reply, she kicked off her sandals and hung them around her neck. She rubbed a little earth into her palms, took a deep breath, and started briskly down the rock face. Coin nodded at the air where she'd stood a breath ago.

"Okay," he murmured.

He knelt and cautiously studied the rocky lip. He was used to climbing the slimy stonework in Mitras; the descent didn't look too difficult. The rumble of the river disturbed him though. He flexed his hands nervously inside his gloves and began the climb.

It was heavy work with the pack, and the way down was treacherous. The rock crumbled under his grip and flaked off under his questing boots. Pebbles and loose soil rained down on his head, forcing him to blink often to clear his vision. He sought out the cracks in the face, places where the rock had been split by the roots of plants. Clinging to the cliffside, he ground his boots into the stone, testing his weight each time. Painfully, limb-by-limb, he edged down the canyon.

At last, he looked through his boots and dropped the last few feet to the beach below. Limbs tremulous and sweaty from the strain, he lay back on solid ground and closed his eyes blissfully. Soon though, his wind came back to him, and he sat up with a sigh. Hunnah was watching him worriedly, he saw.

"Are you all right?" she asked carefully "You took a long time getting down the cliff. I thought you might be in trouble once or twice."

Coin looked at her startled. "I'm fine," he said, "Just not used to climbing cliffs."

Hunnah nodded and began to remove her pack. Coin did the same, wondering why he felt so surprised. It stole over him slowly; it was the first time someone had been worried about him since Daeron died. It was a strange sensation, to almost have a connection with someone again. He was surprised at how much he missed it.

"Wake up boy! She's waiting for you, and I need your eyes to watch her and see our next step," the stone grated in his mind.

He got up obediently, but for the first time he felt more resentment towards the gem then the halfling. He was careful not to show it.

Hunnah was waiting for him down by the edge of the water, munching on an apple. She tossed another one gently to him, and he caught it one-handed and brought it to his mouth. It was hard and sour, but the juice felt wonderful on his dry throat. They stood there, eating their apples in silence, watching the water flow past the next point of their journey.

Ages ago, when the tributary river first cut through the rocks here, it had worn its passage through the chalky ground of the mountainside easily. But in this part of the canyon the water had met an obstacle, a spine of harder rock chance had put in its path. It forked around the obstacle instead, and continued its rush to the Utha. Gradually, the spine had been worn shorter and shorter, and thinner and thinner. Now only a tall pillar remained, rising out of the river like a great grass-topped tower.

"How can we get up that thing?" asked Hunnah, throwing her apple core into the river "It's too deep to wade, and this current will sweep us past in an eye blink. We've the packs to carry as well. There are no handholds to cling to. What do you want us to do, fly?"

"Look at the water," Jothanial told her "That stretch by the cleft rock there, where it catches the light. Tell me what you see."

Coin was the first to spot it.

"The water is sluggish there," he muttered "It doesn't flow past as easily as it should. Something blocks its path… it's shallower there!"

"When we were hiding up here, this was our escape route," Jothanial said "We floated stones down the river and piled them at the base of this pillar, under the water. Swim over to there, and you'll find the water only waist high. It was supposed to be a launching platform for our men to escape down the river if the hiding-place was ever discovered. There was a rope ladder at the top to climb down," he paused dreamily "Of course that will be long gone now, like all the rest."

Hunnah gave the stone a curious look, but it said nothing more. Coin didn't care about the old wizard's reminiscing. He was looking up at the sheer pinnacle of rock trying to ignore the gurgling in his stomach.

"You want us to climb _that_?" he asked "With no ropes, still soaking from the river?"

Whether you could hear a leer from a voice inside your mind or not, the gem delighted in its next words.

"I swore I'd show the way to Kang's Treasure. This is the safest way in that I know. Of course there could be others. Would you like to look?"

Coin swore he could hear Jothanial cackling to himself. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, rather like having echoes bouncing around in your skull.

"Fir's hairy balls! What on earth is up there that we need?"

"A tunnel," the stone informed him "Or rather, a drop. Kang parted the rock with his will here. He burrowed down underneath the river and up, up…" Jothanial trailed off.

"Into the old Imperial mines?" quizzed Hunnah, rummaging in her pack, "They've been searched plenty of times before. Nothing was ever found."

"No," snapped the gem "The Zenni never mined these slopes. Their mines were further up. In any case we never used them. Too many of the mining slaves went over to the Beshtel, and they knew the tunnels far better then us. We found a chain of caves underneath the mountain. An underground stream fed into the river here. We diverted its path down a new channel. Then we blocked off the old entrance with earth and stones. It made a perfect hiding place," he told them proudly.

Coin raised his eyebrows, impressed despite himself by what he was hearing. The monk simply carried on pulling things out of her pack, indifferent as usual to the stone's stories. Perhaps, he thought, she doesn't understand what she is hearing. People with no magic of their own often didn't realise how draining it was to use. You had to concentrate constantly, willing the power into the right focus, remembering every gesture and chant correctly. And every spell cast cost you in power and vitality, making the next one that much harder… He pushed the thoughts of Daeron's death out of his mind. Did he always have to keep coming back to that?

"Kang must have been a powerful priest," he said, "If he could make all this so quickly before the Beshtel scryers found him."

He thought he saw a small smile cross the lips of the halfling, by now munching on a generous slice of cheese. They'd stopped for lunch it seemed.

"It was all done almost without magic!" Jothanial said, "Zenni legionaries were paramount engineers. I doubt either of you could conceive of the sheer skill and organisation involved. Kang barely had to mutter a pray the whole time, except to deflect the scrying spells the Beshtel shamans tried. They weren't," he added disdainfully, "Very good ones."

The monk and the priest glanced at each other, but wisely said nothing. The monk rolled her eyes. Hunnah, Coin realised now, did know the dead wizard better then he did. It wasn't a very comfortable thought.

Jothanial seemed to sense they were tiring of the sound of his voice for he continued peevishly "Anyway, you climb up through the caves. Follow the stream after the first cave. What you're looking for is a pool, in the final cave, right at the top of the mountain. You'll find what you're after there."

"The treasure of Kang," breathed Coin. His fervour reinvigorated his tired body; it tingled with excitement in every limb. Hunnah, passing him another apple, was struck by the covetous expression on a face usually so impassive. Coin bit into the apple absently. He didn't thank her.

"Perhaps," she said smartly "We would be better actually to find this treasure of yours instead of just talking about it."

She stood up as she spoke, brushing crumbs off her robe. Coin looked up at her absently, his mind still on visions of heaped gold coins.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Where we are going," she corrected him, "Is the top of that pinnacle. Hurry up and finish your fruit. You can swim me across first, and then come back for the packs. It'll warm you up for the climb."

"What?" said Coin stupidly.

"I was brought up in the mountains, not on the coast," she said calmly "Swimming is not something I ever learnt."

Coin groaned.


	8. Ϊskangdrur

XV.

The Beshtel chieftain prostrated himself, keeping his face pressed to the ground. Around him the rest of the war party did the same. He stared down at the turf and breathed in the smell of fresh grass. It calmed him. He did not look up at the woman in front of him, or her exhausted companions. She had not given her permission. He tried not to think about what she had done to the spiritman while he waited for her to speak. The man would be given a proper burial, with the full rites. He had been brave, but stupid.

The woman sitting on her horse had wrapped herself up against the cold with a heavy coarse woollen cloak. Now she pulled it tighter around her, uncomfortable in the chilly mountain breeze. It stirred her close-cropped red hair, just beginning to grow back now. The silence was lengthening. She cast about her with her good eye, looking for the scout to translate her words. The other socket gaped emptily. She'd had three blue triangles tattooed around it, drawing in any watcher's gaze. The scout avoided looking at it as he hastily nudged his horse into view. 

She ignored him, and raised the branch of yew she carried in her right hand. It was the oldest badge of a magician, from a time before men had learned to trap and direct the flow of magic with their carved staffs and wands. She felt nothing but contempt for those weaklings and their mumbled charms and props. They had forgotten you could ride the rush of power, letting it wash through you and flood out into the world.

Every eye followed the branch. Even the rustling of her own surviving  
clansmen fell still as they waited for her to speak. She let them wait a  
moment, hanging anxiously on her silence. Then she rattled out her orders   
and let the scout begin his translation, tripping over himself in his rush  
to catch up with her. She could have burned the words into their brains with  
a gesture of course, but it pleased her to watch their confused scramble to obey her. Briefly, it occurred to her to wonder if she would ever get bored with these  
games, but she dismissed the thought. Ridiculous. There were some things one never got tired of watching.

_Ϊskangdrur thought about food._

_It wasn't hungry, except in the way that a troll is always hungry; the distant biting and gnawing in the pit of the belly that drives it always to hunt. It had left the others in the lair behind it, feasting on the carcass of a mountain bear- the previous occupant. Pok had seized its share of the liver and gulped down the rich and oily meat. Its belly gurgled resentfully. It wanted juicy meat._

_Driven off, it had wandered away to follow the trickle of the lair's stream. Now it dipped its claws under the cold water and squatted stock-still. The small blind fish there scooted carelessly over its trap, and it scooped them up, one after another. They wriggled pleasantly on the way down. After its seventeenth fish Ϊskangdrur had eaten enough. It felt too full to bother with the trek pack to the lair. Instead, it splashed out of the stream and curled up around itself to sleep. It dreamed of running down deer._

_Ϊskangdrur woke cramped and dry-mouthed. It padded over to the stream and cupped its claws to drink. It ate more of the little fish, but they didn't satisfy anymore. It would have to go back to the others to find more food. Ϊskangdrur stood and stretched its limbs. The joints popped satisfyingly, and it yawned widely at its image. Its reflection's teeth gleamed wetly back._

Hunnah looked at the travel rations in her lap and back at the cooking pots hanging from her pack longingly. They were camped in the cave at the bottom of the well the stone claimed Kang had gouged out of the rock pinnacle. The well was narrow, and the climb down had been tight and dark. Surely a fire, hidden down here-

"Forget it," Coin told her "We'd be smoked out in seconds."

"I know that!" the monk snapped back irritably. Jothanial had forbidden them to light a fire last night as well. After the hard climbing yesterday, the lack of hot food was beginning to strain the monk's serenity. Coin was exasperated by her appetite, and didn't seem to feel any hunger pangs. The halfling found that particularly galling. Humans never ate enough, she reflected as she munched on her hard tack. It was why the whole race was always so skinny and bad-tempered.

The breakfast was quickly finished in silence, and they quickly packed up camp. Blankets and gear pushed and jammed back into packs. Coin lit both of their lanterns and passed one to her. The gem was carefully stowed away in Coin's money belt. Methodically they began to search the shadows of the first cave for the entrance to the second. Gradually the irritated silence between them changed to one of anticipation. Even Hunnah felt charged with an undercurrent of excitement, unexpressed but undeniably there. What will we find buried here, she wondered silently, at the end of our little journey?

_Ϊskangdrur paused as it turned away from the stream. It tilted its head and listened intently. There it was again; A clattering sound, metal on rock, coming from behind the wall of the cave. It turned its massive shaggy head, sniffing the air. Yes, yes the air was fresher down that way. There must be a passage to another cavern somewhere amongst the cracks and corners. What was making that noise? _

_It hunched forward and picked its way carefully towards the back of the cave. Its long arms reached ahead, picking out a silent route for its thick stumpy legs. Its webbed feet made little sucking noises on the cold stone floor. A gentle waft of air stirred the iron grey hair of its head. It snuffled delicately. Dust and smoke…and prey-scent, rich and satisfying and maddeningly close. _

_Ϊskangdrur's eyes turned upwards…_

_There._

_A triangular patch of darkness deeper then the rest, high up the cave wall. Up came Ϊskangdrur's hands, grasping the stalactites to haul itself up, it crawled up the cave like a giant grey spider. It poked its shaggy head into the crack cautiously. A light! Held above it, it was blinding after the dark of the cave. But its watering eyes still caught the warm, soft glow of prey. Slowly it reached out one clawed hand…_

Coin lifted the lantern and peered into the shadows. There! A crack in the cave wall, a narrow passage they could scramble down. He scrabbled over the pebbly floor and looked down. Two tiny fires reflected his lamp light back at him. What…?


	9. So Like Me

XVI.

Hunnah's head whirled. Up ahead, Coin was screaming. It was a shocked, wailing cry of unexpected injury. A great arm had reached through the rock and clamped itself around his right thigh. It tugged at the cleric impatiently, and Coin's feet flew out from under him. The cleric lost his grip on his lantern, and it was hurled straight into one of the cavern's delicate stalactites. Stone and glass flew everywhere in a brief roar of flame.

Hunnah dropped flat as one glass shard whirled past her cheek and smashed against rocky boulder. Something or someone bellowed loudly. The air was filled with the tinkling of breaking glass as she rolled across the cavern floor. Dust from the fallen stalactite was in her eyes and stinging her nose. Fighting a sneeze, she reached the cleric and snapped out her roll into a defensive crouch. Her quarterstaff was ready in her hand somehow; she'd been carrying her lantern in it before. That had come to rest next to her abandoned pack, throwing a flickering yellow light over this end of the cave.

She blinked; part of the cave wall was a grey troll. Coin lay sprawled at its feet, but the sight of fire had startled it. It had let go of him to squeeze itself fully through the tight crack it had struck from. Now, as Hunnah skidded in front of it, it ignored him for her. It took a tremendous swipe at her face, which Hunnah ducked easily. But it was a feint she realised as it passed harmlessly overhead, for the troll's other claw shot out to snatch at her feet. Hunnah sprang into the air, still bent forwards into her crouch. Her legs swept out to either side of her body, and the greedy hand of the troll closed on nothing.

She landed off balance but kept on her feet. She'd expected it with the rocky cave floor, and instead of struggling she twisted herself, letting the motion carry her away from the monster. She tumbled like an acrobat out of the reach of the troll's teeth and claws. As she rolled, she snapped her staff out into the confounded troll's knee. Her head struck something hard and sharp as she span across the floor, but there was a satisfying crunch of bone where the staff struck. The creature howled and staggered backwards.

Coin clutched at his thigh with both hands and felt the healing spell pulse warmly through his palms. He'd prepared several in case of climbing accidents; he nearly giggled at the thought, but fought it down. There was a knotting sensation in his leg as the spell took hold, and the blood leaking down his leg slowed to a trickle. The sudden realise from pain hit him like an icy draft in the face, and he gasped with it.

Behind him the monster roared.

He ripped his sword out of its scabbard and scrabbled round on his knees, terrified it was back to tear into his back. Instead he saw the monster struck again by the monk. Using her stave as a quarterstaff she jabbed it past the troll's flailing arms and into one it's great watery eyes. The troll shrieked as though burnt, and an astonished Coin saw its eye socket smashed to jelly and bone. 

His mind racing he brought his own sword up and spat out another spell; the blade glowed an angry dark red as the summoned energy wrapped itself around it. The spell cost Hunnah though. The troll pounced like a cat on its prey, trying to trap her under its claws. The monk escaped the monster's leap, but she had forgotten the reach of its arms. A clawed hand swiped out as she rolled; it sliced up her side and glanced off her ribs. Blood blossomed across her robes, and she staggered sideways, her face turned pale.

Struck by a sudden terror at her expression, Coin just charged. He didn't understand it; there was no time to wonder. He just knew that the thought of being all alone in this place was unbearable. His wild charge startled the troll. It tried to ward him off with one arm and keep the monk in sight of its remaining eye and it failed. The beast's damaged knee gave way as it twisted around to fight Coin. When it stumbled to the floor, they both tore into it mercilessly. 

Coin chopped savagely down on the arm the troll raised to shield its face. The sword cut through the tough hide of the troll, the fatty meat of the forearm and through the thick cords of muscles around the wrist. Bone splintered and Coin yelped and staggered back. His jarred wrists nearly made him drop his weapon- the blow had half-severed the monster's hand from its arm, leaving it hanging by a flap of skin.

The troll sat down hard, staring dully at its stump. Then it slumped sideways, as they beat and chopped at it relentlessly. But it wouldn't die. It shrieked and it thrashed, but it couldn't. Its body kept knitting it back together, closing up the injured flesh and keeping it forever just back from the end of death. If they stopped striking it…

Coin's shoulders burned and his sword was slippery in his grasp with troll-blood. His wound had torn itself open during the struggled. He looked at Hunnah. The halfling's face was beaded with sweat. Blood trickled from a gash that ran from eye to jaw, and her body was hunched protectively over her side. They had to escape this madness somehow, find a place to rest, to heal. They could come back again, better prepared next time. He remembered seeing the halfling's staff crush the troll's eye. Yes! That was it!

He shouted at the monk "Hunnah! Blind it with me! Use your staff!"

Hunnah ignored him and leapt away.

Out of the pool of light cast by the lamp she went, and past him, leaving him hacking alone at the writhing troll. For a second he didn't believe it. She'd abandoned him? Then the pool of light from the lamp flickered and moved higher. She was stealing the light. She was leaving him here. He'd underestimated her. He hadn't thought she was so like him.

He left the troll then. He turned to face the light. She was running towards him, clutching the oil-lamp in both hands. Her quarterstaff was nowhere to be seen. Behind him the monster made a deep sucking sound. A claw reached feebly out and gripped his ankle. Hunnah raised the lamp in both hands and hurled it down onto the troll's face. Coin sprang forwards and tackled her to the ground as fire roared its release from confinement. Behind them the troll burned.

Hunnah looked up at Coin through a cake of soot and blood.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.

"No reason," he said, "You just look terrible. Here, let me see those cuts."


	10. Reborn in Stone

XVII.

Nothing much was said during the rest of the ascent. Coin did snarl with the stone furiously for a few minutes before Hunnah forced them to set off, but it came to nothing. Except perhaps that suddenly the cleric listened to the monk and not the gem. They climbed cautiously, weapons still drawn. Only habit had saved them from blundering around in the darkness: Coin's pack always held a bundle of torches in case of emergency. Coin let Hunnah lead the way with her strange staff. He'd seen what it did to the troll, but it was a suspicion that could wait to be confirmed. A bigger treasure was beckoning him again.

Hunnah heard it first, the echo of water lapping gently against rock. For a second she imagined herself back in the monastery's steamy bathhouse, where you could lie back in the warm water listen to its _slap-slap-slap_ against the stone. And she understood what her senses where telling her. She nudged Coin, and indicated he should listen. He lowered the torch and cocked his head.

"Water," he murmured after a minute, "That shouldn't be there. Jothanial said the Zenni diverted the stream."

She nodded silently. Coin fumbled one-handed at his purse. He found the gem and dug it out. Holding it up to the torch light they waited, but the presence of Jothanial Kauld said nothing. Coin shook it impatiently.

"We can hear water in the last cavern," he said curtly "Why?"

"I promised to lead you to Kang's Treasure and I have," the stone's words slid into their minds "Go forwards and find out for yourselves."

The presence fell silent and left them. Hunnah imaged a bloated black spider crawling out of her head and suppressed a shudder. They glanced at each other. Coin was snarling wordlessly but Hunnah only felt resigned.

"It is better to be walking forwards," she quoted. The old proverb raised a reluctant smile from the boy-priest. "Let's go."

With Coin again holding the torch above their heads, they walked up the winding stream-carved passage.

They found the entrance to the last cave easily. On the third twist of the ascent Hunnah found herself right in front of it. She saw it as a rectangle of sky framed in rock. When she stopped, dazzled by the light, Coin bumped straight into the back of her.

"What's wrong?" he hissed "Why have we-. Oh. Oh my."

In front of them a huge cavern lay exposed to the sunlight. An underground lake had once lapped here. Now the rubble of the roof littered the cave floor, from great chunks of rock to tiny shattered fragments. Roots and leaves curled around rocky ledges. There were no icy mountain winds to struggle with here. There was moss and heather and wild grass, stunted pine and even a handful of scattered flowers; Hunnah recognised Bitterroots and the bell-shaped Purple Fringes, though nothing else. And at the lowest point of the old cave floor a pool of grey water waited, pristine and undisturbed.

They stared and they gaped. They were standing in a huge bowl that dipped deep into the mountainside, teaming with life and perfectly hidden. Hunnah smiled. For her part she felt nothing but relief. Coin, still staring stupidly about him as if expecting gold and jewels to leap out of the rocky ground, just gabbled.

"What is this place? Where is the treasure? How can there be treasure here?"

"This is the sacred retreat of Cleric-Captain Kang of the Hiladic 8th Imperial Legion, his personal shrine to the Goddess Shan. He came here often you know. Strange to think no one ever realised a half-elven nature priest might have very different ideas on what was valuable enough to keep hidden. I did once find it very amusing listening to the stories they made up about this place."

Coin was silent, staring at the distant pool. Hunnah watched his breathing quicken, becoming fast and tight.

"Oh come, come boy, what did you expect to find? Rusting swords and mouldering coins issued in the name of dead emperors? It was all spent winning the mountain chiefs."

To Hunnah's surprise Coin did not explode, though he trembled with barely suppressed rage.

"I want to know why," he said eventually.

"Very good boy, you're starting to think. I knew I could use you."

"Why?" repeated Coin "Why dangle this place in front of me all the way back at Shandon Hall? You didn't just want to escape your daughter. You wanted me to take you here from the start."

Hunnah started. Inside her mind she heard Jothanial cackle.

"Now you're upsetting your guide," he said "Look at the water with your spellsight boy. What do you see?"

Without any gesture Hunnah could see, Coin looked negligently over at the pool. But he cried out when he saw it and turned sharply away, screwing up his eyes.

"The glare!" he gasped, "My eyes! It shines! You could have warned me!"

"That pool is filled with powerdust," Jothanial said "Flecks of it are washed down in the spring that feeds it from deposits so deep inside the mountain that no mage has ever found them. It was Shan's gift to her champion. The Beshtel's migration north was a catastrophe for these lands. They burned the farms and the villages, they cut down the woods for their fires and their cattle ate the crops. The rivers and streams were polluted with the filth and offal of their passing. The land couldn't support them for long, so they kept moving, stripping everything in their path bare. Shan demanded he restore the balance."

"Fascinating," Coin said shortly "No-one remembers this dead elf's secret except you, and you wait until _you're_ dead before you tell anyone. I don't care about its history. What do you want with it?"

"He wants the power for a spell," Hunnah said softly "He's crippled like this, trapped in that jewel with no magic and no body. Dependant on others and at their mercy; just what he always feared."

"Very astute of you my dear," Jothanial said, "Wrong, but close enough for a non-mage. Actually, the spell has already been cast- I am in the gem. But it isn't complete yet."

"Your daughter," Hunnah guessed quickly.

"Yes!" Jothanial sounded positively delighted with her "My dear little Zia poisoned me just before I could bring the gem here. She froze arsenic into the ice cubes of my water jug. My body was dying, and I had to transmigrate into the gem immediately. So here I ended up, stuck-"

"Until I came along and stupidly carried you here," said Coin bitterly.

"Such a small, frightened little creature you were," mocked the stone "Zia's little pastimes didn't sit well with your stomach did they? Especially when they begged you to let them go…"

Coin paled and shut his mouth. Hunnah avoided his eyes. Instead she glared at the stone.

"Shut up wizard," she snapped "_He_ never revelled in what he did. What happens when you finish the spell?"

"Rebirth," the voice in their mind seemed to breath the word "Place me in that pool and you trigger my completion. The spell draws in magic from other sources, and with it the crystals of this stone form and form again, shaping me a new body. One that needs no rest, no food, and no water. A moving crystal statue, impervious to fire or swords, with the strength of rock. I could return to the clan as leader, their new stone Emperor."

"I see," she said curtly "You want us to bring you back."


	11. Priest's Oath

XVIII.

"You want us to bring you back?" echoed Coin incredulously. He started cackling, "You poisonous old man, why on Irth would we do that? So you could tear us to pieces so no one would know your dirty little secrets? I don't think so. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to find a nice deep pit somewhere and toss you down it. You can try talking to the trolls."

He made to get up. But even as Coin spoke Hunnah knew somehow the stone would have seen this moment and prepared for it. Jothanial schemed now as naturally as he used to breathe. She was right to be pessimistic.

"You can scry can't you boy?" Jothanial hissed "Find my daughter. Look where she is now, and who she has with her."

Coin looked suddenly caught out. "You know I can't do that," he said, sounding agitated "Zia has a much stronger mind then me. I couldn't break through her shields if I tried."

"But she won't. She wants you to see. If you feel trapped, you panic, and when you panic, helps the hunter. And she enjoys your fear of course."

Coin looked down at the gem in his palm.

"No," he said, "I don't believe it. Not even you would let your daughter's scrying find our trail. It's you she wants to destroy most of all. She's your worst enemy!"

"Then look," Jothanial told him serenely "And when you find her, do as I say. Only I can protect you from her. The clan and the tribes will follow me, not her. I'm the only friend you have up here."

"For the Gods' sakes just look!" Hunnah burst out, startling him. She had gone very pale, and her eyes bored into his. What had gotten into her? He gave up arguing and sank into the trance, dreading what he would find. 

Coin's face went slack for a few moments. Hunnah sat tensely, waiting. A sickly sensation had gripped her belly when Coin had spoken. She felt like a talon was clenching and unclenching her guts, and in her mind she heard Pankelta's words roll passed unheeded.

_'The price of your waystation is costing us more then we had bargained forforforfor.'_

When he returned to himself she could see he was trying not to tremble. All his pent-up rage had fled. She tried to give him a few moments to master himself, but just had to ask.

"What did you see?"

"I saw her," he answered dully "She's arrived with a war party at the canyon. She has men scouting for the entrance right now. There are about two-score riders with her that I saw. Some are clansmen, but most were Beshtels."

Hunnah stared at him, her face eerily devoid of emotion. She said nothing. He couldn't believe she could take it so calmly. Did she want to die?

Frustrated, Coin burst out, "Don't you understand? She's turned the Beshtels against us! Even if we somehow get past her riders the whole countryside will be searching after us. She's cut us off!"

"Zia Kauld never crossed the wardlands with a handful of clansmen. Those are the survivors of another warband, a mix-up with new men. She cut her way through to find us."

Con stared at her. "I'm so sorry," he said, and he meant it, "But we have to do as he says. We would do better to cut our own throats before letting Zia Kauld take us alive."

"No," Hunnah said, "He let Two Pines burn. I know it. He wants to rule the Barrens and the mountains and anywhere he can. There will be more burnings, more deaths. If we do this now, it will never stop."

"We have to do this! She'll torture us to death!"

Coin was shouting now, his face red. Hunnah just shook her head at him, trying to shake off the memories. Coin's hand fell to his sword.

"Stop dithering and just kill her boy!" hissed the stone; "She'll give you up to the torturers otherwise."

The cleric was breathing heavily, his eyes were wide and darting around as though he expected the sorceress to suddenly spring at him clean out of the rock. Hunnah drank in his appearance. In her mind she played out a scene. A boy pulls out a sword; a monk strikes the boy down. As he dies, the monk takes his jewel and throws it into darkness. The monk waits for men to come climbing up, up to meet her. She throws herself amongst them, finds a quick death. Everything ends.

The monks of Bright Rock have a saying about redemption "The mountain path is long and hard, but it leads upwards."

"No," she said. "There is another way."

"What?"

"Do you trust me?"

Coin looked her. He remembered a lantern flying through the dark. He took his hand away from the sword.

"Yes," he said, "I do."

"Don't listen to her boy! She wants revenge on me, she'll sacrifice you to get it!"

Jothanial's voice was ranting in their minds. If he'd had lips, spittle would have splattered them. Coin swayed uneasily, but he waited for Hunnah to speak.

"If you listen to him, she'll still be waiting for you at the foot of the mountain," Hunnah told him "He won't kill his own heir. She's too useful a tool for a marriage alliance. You'll have to live right next to her. Who do you think would win in that battle?"

Coin licked dry lips before speaking; "What do you have in mind?"

"We've got to climb up out of this trench. We have the ropes, the climbing equipment. These mountains are full of iron and powerdust. We might die from the cold or a rock fall, but Zia will never be able to find us."

"Die! Of course you'll die! It's a hundred and fifty miles of freezing wasteland. You have no maps, no food, and no experience! Its suicide!"

"Just standing by this pool, it would be like trying to stare into the sun," Coin murmured "And perhaps she has no ropes or picks with her either."

Hope gave both of them energy. Ignoring the ranting gem as it threatened, cajoled and finally pleaded with them, they tore up their cloaks for rags, unpacked the ropes and gear, and filled their flasks with the pool water. The way up would be treacherous, and the top of the trench grey, windy and desolate after the blooming cavern. They left the stone till last.

Eventually there was nothing left to do. Coin looked over at Hunnah. He reached into his purse and pulled out Jothanial.

"What do we do with him?" he asked.

Hunnah glanced around, then picked up the short black pack shovel and held it out to him.

"Bury him here, where she'll never find him. We've got a long trip ahead of us."

"You wouldn't dare," the jewel hissed in their minds.

Using the ice pick and the shovel they began to move the stony earth.

"You can't do this," wailed the stone to Coin "You swore an oath to protect me and I hold you to it! You'll be struck down, see if you aren't!"

"Right," Coin smiled a thief's smile at him, "I did. And I'm keeping it. I've carried you away from your Hall, and now I'm hiding you safe here. And I'm drawing your daughter away from you, and through the mountains. Am I not kind?"

He picked the stone and cast it into the small hole they'd scratched out.

The dirt covered the stone's last screams.

THE END


End file.
